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New Deal (Disabled)

14. Mr. David Watts (St. Helens, North): What lessons his Department has drawn from the working of the new deal for the disabled in helping disabled people obtain employment. [93761]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Mr. Hugh Bayley): There is clear evidence that the new deal for disabled people is helping people to move from incapacity benefit into work. One thousand people have found jobs through these new deal pilots so far.

Mr. Watts: I thank the Minister for his reply. May I ask my hon. Friend to ensure that any problems that have been highlighted during the pilot scheme are resolved before the scheme goes national? Given the concern about the closure of Remploy factories, will he give me a guarantee that when the new system is up and running, when pilot schemes are extended, and when there are new deals for the disabled throughout the country, there will be better, not fewer, options for the disabled?

Mr. Bayley: Yes, I can give my hon. Friend those assurances. We have learned a great deal from the new deal pilots. We have found that it is possible to help people with a wide range of disabilities, including some who have been extremely seriously disabled. When I visited one of the pilots a few weeks ago in the north of Scotland, I met a man who had been unemployed because of incapacity for 29 years. The new deal had provided him with an opportunity that he had sought for a long time--the opportunity to work.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment is making available additional resources to pay for supported employment. That will help Remploy and other organisations that are providing supported employment.

Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry): Will the Minister ensure that he takes more seriously than it has been taken before the research commissioned from the Institute for Employment Studies that suggests an alarming shortfall in future supported employment placements? The figures suggest that there may be a deficiency of between 40,000, on a narrow estimate, and up to 179,000, on a broad estimate, of potential future demand for supported places. Will he therefore ensure that if he implements a national roll-out of the new deal for disabled people, he and his colleagues will provide the places before the scheme

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comes into effect, so that they do not disappoint the many disabled people who would wish to avail themselves of those places?

Mr. Bayley: There is certainly a need to provide supported employment, but it would be wrong to characterise the new deal as a scheme that simply provides opportunities for people to work on Government- financed or Government-subsidised schemes. It is far

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wider than that. We have to ensure that work pays by changing the benefit and tax systems that we inherited; and we have to ensure that people who are disabled and seek work get the personal advice and support that they need to obtain employment. We are doing that. We must ensure that barriers to work--some employers are good but others are much poorer--are removed, which we are doing through the disability discrimination legislation. We must advance on all fronts, and we are doing so.

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Points of Order

3.32 pm

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby): On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Most Members of this House, whatever their political party, are justly proud of the hard-won freedom of speech we have in this country and the freedom of legitimate, peaceful protest. We were surprised last week that the Home Secretary did not come to the House to discuss the public order situation surrounding the visit of President Jiang Zemin. Have you heard whether the Home Secretary intends to come to the House to discuss the unprecedented suppression of the demonstrators last week?

Madam Speaker: As far as I am aware, neither the Home Secretary nor any other Minister is coming to make a statement. Of course, when the Home Secretary comes to answer questions, the hon. Gentleman may table a question on this matter. No doubt he will do so.

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Orders of the Day

Financial Services and Markets Bill (Suspension)

3.33 pm

The Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office (Mr. Paddy Tipping): I beg to move,

That the following provisions shall apply to the Financial Services and Markets Bill:

1. Standing Committee A shall report the Bill to the House, so far as then amended, not later than Thursday 11th November.
2. On the report of the Bill to the House in accordance with paragraph 1, further proceedings on the Bill shall be suspended until the next session of Parliament.
3. If a Bill is presented in the next session in the same terms as the Bill reported to the House in accordance with paragraph 1, it shall be read the first and second time without Question put, shall be ordered to be printed, and shall stand committed, in respect of those clauses and schedules not ordered to stand part of the Bill in this session, to a Standing Committee of the same Members as the Members of the Standing Committee on the Bill in this session.

I am pleased and privileged to move the motion. Its effect is to stay proceedings on the Financial Services and Markets Bill in Standing Committee A at the end of this Session and to carry it over into the next Session. The Bill will then be resumed in the next Session at the point in Committee that it reached before Prorogation.

This is the first occasion on which a motion has been moved to carry over a public Bill and I am grateful to Opposition Front Benchers for their agreement to apply this procedure to this important Bill. I think that we can all agree that it will receive better and more detailed parliamentary scrutiny through being considered to a timetable that will not be constrained by the end of the current parliamentary Session. I hope that, in time, this procedure will become regular parliamentary practice because it will help to maximise parliamentary time and will lead to more thorough scrutiny.

The carry-over procedure was recommended to the House in the first report from the Modernisation Committee in July 1997. That report was agreed unanimously by the Committee, which included representatives of the official Opposition. The report said:

"The Committee agrees with the principle that, in defined circumstances and subject to certain safeguards, Government bills may be carried over from one session to the next in the same way as hybrid and private Bills".

The Modernisation Committee's first report was approved by the House, without a vote, on 13 November 1997. In that debate, the right hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. MacGregor), a distinguished former Leader of the House, said:

"On the carry-over of Bills and paragraph 102 of the report, I think that it is right to have the flexibility that applies to private and hybrid Bills, not least because it is one way of handling the too frequent problem where many amendments come back from the House of Lords and we rush them through in the last three or four days.


No one could argue that this is satisfactory. The problem arises because, inevitably, some Bills will be introduced later in the Session; they cannot all be done earlier. A genuine pressure on time causes that. Used sensibly, this proposal is a way of ensuring better scrutiny at that stage.--[Official Report, 13 November 1997; Vol. 300, c. 1080.]

Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): Is the Minister really saying that it is a good thing to bail

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the Government out of difficulties caused by the bad management of business? It is bad management for a Government to leave the conclusion of important Bills to such a late date in a Session that a large number of amendments from another place cannot be handled properly in the House of Commons. The reason that the Minister has given for introducing this new policy is not very convincing. Should not he concentrate on getting the Government's act together and managing business more effectively?

Mr. Tipping: The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that we need to manage business effectively and make good use of parliamentary time. I have no criticism of any of his tactics in the House, as he uses the conventions properly. With the support of Opposition Front-Bench Members, the Government advocate this approach in the case of the Financial Services and Markets Bill because we believe that it is a complex and important measure with important principles that require careful thought and analysis. It would not make sense to lose the Bill, and the City would not support that.

The Modernisation Committee subsequently produced another report on the more detailed arrangements. That report recommended, first, that Bills be carried over by ad hoc motions, rather than under a general Standing Order. Secondly, it recommended that the procedure should be used on Bills that had not yet left the House in which they originated, rather than on ones already going through the second House. The Committee's third recommendation was that the eligibility of Bills for carry-over must be settled by agreement through the usual channels. That report was also unanimous and was agreed by the House, without a vote, on 4 June 1998.

The Committee set out a number of conditions for carry-over. The first was that the Government should identify as early as possible any Bill that they wished to be carried over. The second was that carry-over should be used only for Bills that were to be subject to Select Committee-style scrutiny, or which were introduced after a certain period in the Session. The third recommendation was that no Bill should be carried over more than once. The Financial Services and Markets Bill fully satisfies all those conditions.

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